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Historical Potpourri: Lincoln County formed in 1869

Johnson Stearns (1917- 2015) and I shared an interest in area history, but we also read the same books and had the same August birth month. We both had a claim of each having residences in our younger days, in Nogal Canyon and Carrizozo.

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Historical Potpourri: Lincoln County formed in 1869

In 1909, voters elected to move the county seat from Lincoln To Carrizozo. Lincoln residents protested. The U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter in 1913. In the 1960s this building was torn down.(Photo: Courtesy/Carrizozo Works, Inc)

Johnson Stearns (1917- 2015) and I shared an interest in area history, but we also read the same books and had the same August birth month. We both had a claim of each having residences in our younger days, in Nogal Canyon and Carrizozo. Therefore, as neighbors and friends we often had plenty of information to exchange.

Whenever I visited with him in his office or in his living room, he first exclaimed, “Polly! What do you know?” or “What have you been up to?”

On August 27, he would have been 99 years of age and he was “sharp as a tack” last year.

This week I continue the history as he wrote it for his Lincoln County board game:

Lincoln County was formed in 1869 and that time it contained 250,000 square miles, being the largest county in the United States with our eastern boundary bordering Texas. Even after having several counties carved from it, Lincoln County still contains approximately 10,000 square miles and it has only within the last two decades that it contained more than one person per square mile.

As statehood approached and became a reality in 1912, it was deemed advisable to have county seats, where possible, located on the railroads.

Thus it was that in Lincoln County, Carrizozo was chosen and the county seat moved away from Lincoln. There was the usual controversy, which resulted in the courthouse being without a roof for a period of time until the litigation could be settled.

The future was bright, employment was good, there was activity everywhere a person looked but there was a problem. Steam engines require a good quality of water for their boilers and the gyp water to be found along the railroad’s route caused foaming, which was an altogether unsatisfactory condition for the safe operation of these locomotives.

South of Carrizozo the developers had made arrangements for acquisition of water from the Sacramento Mountains and at Three Rivers they were able to obtain good, clear mountain water, purchasing it from the Indians. By being able to obtain water rights on Eagle Creek and Bonito, this good, clear water was piped via gravity to Carrizozo and on the east of Carrizozo twelve miles to a pumping station at Coyote.

From that pumping plant it was forced to the top of the hill at Corona where it again flowed by gravity to pasture east of Vaughn. In 1930 a dam was under construction on Bonito Creek to impound that water and guarantee a year round supply.